nwasianweekly.com
April 19, 2008

Wendy Liu

Tibet in my eyes may be different from yours

By Wendy Liu
Northwest Asian Weekly

Being a Chinese American, I have written a number of opinions on China-related issues. One reader, however, sharply pointed out in an e-mail what had been missing in my pieces: “You mention the economic progress the Chinese are making but, unfortunately, you make no mention of Tibet.”

He was right. I never did. Maybe I tried to avoid the controversy around the issue or felt too helpless to bridge the gap of understanding, mine and his and those sharing his views.

Now with Tibetan protests erupting inside and outside of China and with cries of “cultural genocide” and “boycotting Beijing Olympics” around the world, I feel the least I could do is to join the discussion.

I remember how pretty I felt, as a schoolgirl in China, when I learned a few moves of Tibetan dance together with my classmates, especially with my imaginary long sleeves. As a native of Xi’an, the former capital of Tang, I admired the courage of Princess Wencheng, Tang Emperor Taizong’s niece, who married Tibetan King Songtsän Gampo in the 600s as part of a peace treaty. And as any student in China, one also learned that Tibet became an administrative region of China’s as early as the 13th century under the Yuan Dynasty.

From the movie “The Serf,” I got glimpses of the old Tibet where a young slave bent over as a stepstool each time his master mounted or dismounted the horse. Through stories and pictures, I became aware of the inhuman practice of the Tibetan nobles having containers for offerings made from the skulls and skins of their slaves.

I learned of one way the Chinese interior supported the remote region. My brother’s military transportation company trucked goods from Sichuan to Tibet year in and year out. I also knew part of the Chinese “migration” to Tibet. My desk-mate at college volunteered upon graduation to work in Tibet instead of finding a more comfortable job in our province.

Like many fans in China, I fell in love with the song “Qinghai-Tibet Plateau,” by Li Na, the first time I heard it, with her expansive Tibetan-style singing and the dreamy yet inquiring lyrics. And I continue to be intrigued by the fact that the first building on the grounds of the famous Potala Palace in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, was put up by Songtsän Gampo to welcome his Chinese bride.

It was disheartening to see the anger and the hatred of the recent Tibetan protesters towards the Chinese, considering all the investment, infrastructure and aid the Chinese central government had put in the area over the decades, including the work of my brother and my classmate.

It was also perplexing that many in the West accused China of destroying Tibetan culture but forgot that the Chinese destroyed all traditional culture, including their own, during the Cultural Revolution, or blamed China for the commercial downside in Tibet today yet ignored that the new market-oriented economy had revived everywhere in China vices once banned under a more pure socialist government.

It was deluding that some in America talked about old Tibet as a Paradise Lost. “In reality,” as Dr. Michael Parenti wrote, “it was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La.” And it should have been shocking to anyone that the CIA, according to intelligence and security expert Richard M. Bennett, had covertly worked with the Dalai Lama and the Free Tibet movement in the 1959 rebellion against the Chinese.

But no matter how I, or you, understand or think or feel about Tibet, the differences and disputes may be unavoidable. As Prof. Samuel P. Huntington wrote, “post–Cold War conflict would most frequently and violently occur because of cultural rather than ideological differences.”

Look at the independent former republics of the Soviet Union, or the newly independent states of the former Yugoslavia, or the ongoing Sunni and Shia feud in Iraq. These differences may have been exploding after the Cold War; they had been there for hundreds of years. The China-Tibet situation may have just proved the Huntington theory afresh.

In an interesting twist, it occurred to me that on Tibet, the Chinese are not unlike the Americans who have an impulse to liberate less-fortunate people. Even the New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof described China’s and America’s problems as similar by comparing Iraqis and Tibetans.

But the similarity goes only so far. Iraq, after all, is not part of America — while Tibet is part of China, until, of course it becomes independent.

Wendy Liu is a China business consultant, translator and writer, living in Seattle.

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